Do we need "Money"?

I've always wondered this. Do we need money? or to put it more exact, do we really need a currency?

You would think we do, especially seeing the world as it is. Without a currency this kind of world we live in now-a-days would go into complete turmoil.
But think of our ancestors. Think way back, when people used to trade items instead of using currency. Why did currency come about?

Some would say, without it, we would have never had an "advanced" society as today. But I highly disagree. Think about it. If we did not have a currency, would there be a money aka root of all evil thing going on? What I mean is would people really want to steal?

My answer is no. If we were to have a resource based economy that gives the basic necessities of living to every family and human being then people would voluntarily ask to do something for society. I believe science and technology would still evolve, most likely in an even faster rate. With no money holding scientists down to needing funding for research, they would get everything they need to develop new technologies, medicines etc. Hell we might of even been on the Moon already by now.

Thoughts?

(I wish I had some sources but this was more of a general viewpoint since I want to see what other people think about this.)

reply to post by OnlyTruth


You raise an interesting question, and my simple answer to "do we need money?"
NO.
We, as a people (as a whole) have been built up to it as a necessity of life.
There is always someone out there telling you that "you need this" to survive.

So some guy up the road invents a new tool, let's say for instance a plow... that can rip the ground apart much quicker than your plow. Would you want it? Maybe. Would you be inclined to trade a bushel of corn for it?
Is it wrong of him (or you) to do that?
Absolutely not, he has something you need right?
And you have something he needs.
Such is the way of things, at least in 'ye olde days.

When it comes down to it, the bartering system is on the the same as money.
The difference is, now... in this day and age, we do not work in fields or sell corn for a living. (figuratively)

The need is still the same, only the ways and means have changed.

Somewhere down the lines, something has changed... and not for the better. Now there are A few that control the needs of The Many
In either system it is easy to take advantage of someone, but back then... at least it was mano y mano. A lot less complicated, and I'm all for it.

IMHO
We would still advance.

Good post!
T minus.






[edit on 09/3/9 by telemetry]

This is nuts, you cannot have a modern society without money, the Romans learned that. All societies learned that long ago. How many buckets of grain you going to pay all the people who built the space shuttle? And once they have plenty of buckets worth, then what you going to trade?

reply to post by Pappie54



What happened to the Romans while Nero was fiddling then?

You are arguing semantics mate. I'm sure that there are some societies that still get by just fine without a controlled currency. They might be far less advanced yes, but so what? How much better off are we from them really?
People are still dying from starvation while some countries throw away enough usable sustenance to feed them.

I'm just as guilty man, and yes it hurts.

T-






[edit on 09/3/9 by telemetry]

Originally posted by Pappie54
This is nuts, you cannot have a modern society without money, the Romans learned that. All societies learned that long ago. How many buckets of grain you going to pay all the people who built the space shuttle? And once they have plenty of buckets worth, then what you going to trade?

You didn't understand my post did you? In a resource based economy I meant that everyone would get what they need. In such a way, scientists would not want more for what they are doing. That's what I am trying to say. We would advanced based on our own wanting to advance.

reply to post by telemetry


But that is not an argument for the ability of man to have an efficient society without money. If you cannot create a valid argument, you are not in command of the facts and/or have a broad enough view of the situation and conditions this idea is going to be applied to. You are not including the factors of human nature. Even most communes fail for eventually individuals feel they are not getting their fair share for what they put in or give and the commune falls apart. It is like believing in Freeman economics which did not take into account the human factors, it was based only on the numbers and believed that you should not include the human factors in the calculations. Well the human factor of greed swamped that theory as Greenspan as admitted. No one is supporting pure Freeman economics now days. You need one constant unifying factor in the equation for a smooth economy and that is what money gives us. Sure it goes up and down in value but it is still the constant in the equation for the moment of concern. It is the key to all of us being able to play in an economy.

If you are going to argue a position, bring forth examples that can work, show us the equations. It is a fact, we have 300 million people in this country, you can't barter if you live in the deep city for grain. This idea is just not rooted in the real world.

reply to post by OnlyTruth


That's even more unworkable than a barter economy. It puts all the power of distribution in the hands of the government, or alternately, in the hands of some kind of bizarro-world humanity where everyone does everything that needs to be done, including shipping food thousands of miles.

And after all, you can't just give everything they need regardless of what they do with their time; it's got to come from somewhere, and there aren't a whole lot of people who want to work in a textile factory as their occupation/hobby. You need people manning the farms and factories, and to do so, you need to give them a reason to work in farms and factories. Hoping they'll do it just out of goodwill to their fellow man ranks below even the threat of physical violence as a motivator. There needs to be some actual incentive.

pretty much: if being unemployed is just as good as being employed, with the added bonus of 8 more hours of free time every day, a lot of people aren't going to work.

If it's not in the hands of a nigh-omnipresent state's distribution network, then the only scale at which it can work is the family/commune level, which it doesn't take a genius to see that it can't work for the world's 6.7 billion people. it would necessarily mean the end of cities and industry. The world's population would need to be drastically reduced beforehand. Maybe if all the world's cities were destroyed, it could work.

If it does involve a nigh-omnipresent government, then you've got something akin to the soviet union, minus the various meritocratic incentives to actually do anything. I give it three years before people start dying in the streets by the thousands.

Here's an example of what happens in an economic system where every necessity is provided: prison. And yet they still trade things like cigarettes, drugs, and homosexual sexual favors. The black market thrived in the soviet union, too. Greed isn't limited to money; people want THINGS (sometimes intangibles). money is just a means to that end. You can only eliminate official money. People will still be trading hard drugs for government food rations under the radar, and such.

Science is hard work, and takes years of schooling. Pretty much everyone doing it chose the profession because they had a passion for it. Most of them find jobs in their field. Most modern science is done with equipment too expensive for individual scientists to afford. I don't know how you'd go about requisitioning a giant particle accelerator as a "need".

reply to post by OnlyTruth


What if in this society of yours, you built something with your own hands and somebody took it home with them and gave you nothing in return. You build another and somebody else takes it and gives nothing. Eventually you will stop building anything due to the negative feedback.

That is why your idea will not work now nor has it ever worked in any situation other than a tiny group living without technology or advancements. Advancement requires positive reinforcement.

As to barter. It is legal now and anyone can do it. People do not because of the logistics involved which is obvious. How many truckloads of corn would you have to haul to buy your house and what would the seller do with a mountain of corn?

Money is just a representation of barter. There is actually no difference in theory. It just saves all the shuffling around of goods and services pure barter would cause and saves all the repetition of moving goods around pure barter would require.

As to the difficulties of what you base your currency on, that is whole other can of worms.

I've posted this link before, but I think it's the perfect solution to wean us off the current monetary-system: The End of Ordinary Money
It's a good fun read, and you'll learn som neat stuff too.
Once we're out from under the control of the few, it will be easier to convert to a money-free resource-based economy. (Google: Venus-Project)

reply to post by Blaine91555


Glad you picked up on that Blaine,
You said what I was grasping for.... in far less words.


Same coin, but...
to sum it short, it is all perception.
The realization of:
It's not easy doing it alone.



Patched into the grid, and awaiting ideas.
T-

reply to post by Blaine91555


Yea, if you build something that's crap, and people take it from you, then you will get nothing out of it. But If you put your heart into your work, build high-quality stuff, then people will praise you.
Isn't that all we really work for? Acceptance, Praise?
Imagine a society where nobody has a job per-se, but rather alot of useful hobbies.
I mean, you already have people who love to paint complicated, beautiful murals on city-walls. Some of them covering entire city-blocks. These people do it for free.
Out of love for creation. Don't tell me you'd turn down an offer of someone to paint your house with such a motif for free. You'd probably even invite them for dinner, let them hang out, or fix their car for them.
Our world is full of examples of people doing stuff just so.
Take the free-party scene. A bunch of people get together and listen to awesome music, BYOB. Donations not mandatory. This, of course goes straight against the grain of local business, and so, the government. That's why they ban them, brand them with drug-abuse, and tax-evasion.
How can you evade taxes, when you don't make any money

EDIT: spelling

[edit on 2009.3.9 by Carlthulhu]

Money makes a society more mobile. It makes it easier to move around and travel if you don't have to drag around your whole herd and possessions. You can now exchange your goods for a currency of equal value, and when you get to your destination convert the currency back into goods.

If we had no currency, you would pretty much be stuck where you were born, or not far from it.


[edit on 9-3-2009 by TheComte]

Excrept from "The End of Ordinary Money"

Electronic Cash the Way It Ought To Be Suppose we had it our way. Suppose we sat down to create digital cash that had all the right properties. What would these be? Think of the attractive properties of currency--physical cash.
1) Physical cash is a portable medium of exchange. You carry it in your pocket to give to people when you make purchases. The digital equivalent of this process could be provided by smart cards, which would have the mobility of physical cash and even improve on it. The weight of $1,000,000 in digital money is the same as the weight of $1.

2) You would want the ability to make digital cash payments off-line, just like you can with physical cash. A communication link between every store you shop at and your bank's authorization computer shouldn't be required. Moreover, if digital cash is to have all the desirable qualities of physical cash, you should be able to transfer digital cash directly to another smart-card-carrying individual. Smart cards that could connect directly to other smart cards would be ideal in this respect, and would represent an improvement over physical cash. Even if everyone observed two smart cards communicating, they would have no way of knowing whether the transaction involved $5 or $50,000. There would be no need to slide money under the table.

3) Digital cash should be independent of physical location--available everywhere and capable of being transferred through computer and other telecommunication channels. So we want a smart card that can jack into the communication nodes of the global information network. One should be able to pop into a phone booth to make or receive payments.

4) Got change for a dollar for the quarter slots in the pool table? Just as we "make change" or divide physical currency into subunits, so should electronic cash be divisible. Is this a problem? Hmm. Electronic calculators can perform an operation know as division, and so can third-graders. So smart cards ought to be able to handle this also, even if it presents a few difficulties for theoretical cryptology.

5) To be secure against crooks and rip-off artists, digital cash should be designed in such a way that it can't be forged or reused. We wouldn't want people spending the same money twice, or acting as their own mini-Federal Reserve Systems and creating money from nothing.

6) The most important requirement for individual freedom and privacy is that digital cash transactions should be untraceable, yet at the same time enable you to prove unequivocally whether you made a particular payment.

Really, you should read it. It's worth it!

[edit on 2009.3.10 by Carlthulhu]

Originally posted by Pappie54
reply to post by telemetry

 

But that is not an argument for the ability of man to have an efficient society without money. If you cannot create a valid argument, you are not in command of the facts and/or have a broad enough view of the situation and conditions this idea is going to be applied to. You are not including the factors of human nature.

It is a valid question to me, therefore I ask.
The fact is, you got it... human nature.
Believe me you, I know the situation that I am in, and many others I know the same. I know what applies in my world. That is why I question.

If you are going to argue a position, bring forth examples that can work, show us the equations. It is a fact, we have 300 million people in this country, you can't barter if you live in the deep city for grain. This idea is just not rooted in the real world.

I'm not arguing a position, I'm just relaying what I have experienced in my life. If it dosen't apply to you, then it is all well and good. I don't need a spaceship. And I will tell you that I am not "that well off" living on the lap of luxury, I am a simple man. And yes I have bartered and been a good tradesman to get where I am now. Then again, I don't live in the city. (you are right on that)


Like I said, I'm speaking for myself.
This idea [or idealism] is rooted in the real world. You think we all just hopped onto this rock with a pocket full of change? The only change we had back then was out desire to be.

My point to you and the OP is....
Capitalism is everywhere.

Not calling you out, just trying to wrap my head around it.

T~

Back int he 80s, a company sprung up that developed a barter system and they went national. You could sign up and trade services and goods to the system and get credits and go to a store that was in the system you wanted or go to a dentist, or whatever. It died a quiet death. The problem was that the people at the top, those who set it up could make it work for them for they had first choice at all that came in and the people on the low end of the system had only crap to choose from. It was great for your local dentist for he could put an hour on your teeth and you'd have to plumb his whole house to pay it off. It didn't work because the values would not translate and like all societies or groups, the powerful and well placed reaped the best benefits. You guys are not the first to think of this or try a version to see if it would work. It doesn't and every real world effort has eventually failed.

reply to post by Carlthulhu

Isn't that all we really work for? Acceptance, Praise?

Some work for the betterment of themselves, some for other things. Some work for that warm fuzzy feeling that they get inside from helping someone less fortunate out.

Some take advantage of the system.

T~

Define money.

Today, we have funny money .. fiat money. It's just worthless paper and ink that serves as a promise, a debt.

What we need is a currency that is as valuable as its face value. Gold worked that way. And, we need a currency that can't be devalued and robbed from us.

Imagine if we did all our trading with gold. For example, there would be no foreign debt if we traded gold for all those iPods and other imports. Today, a lot of people are holding fiat dollars that could become worthless overnight. If all that currency was not a promissory note, but had actual value like gold, it couldn't FAIL! And, there would be no promises/debt involved.

And, one of the biggest problems with fiat money is that YOU can be robbed of its value. Here is what I mean by that. Imagine you got paid $5 for an hour of labor 20 years ago, and that $5 was worth a gallon of milk and 5 loaves of bread. Suppose you wanted to hang onto that compensation for that hour of labor for when you retire. The problem with that is that today that $5 will just barely buy you a gallon of milk .. so forget the bread. Thus I ask, where the HELL did my wealth go? Why did that compensation for that hour of labor 20 years ago become worth so much less today? Who the hell jacked me of 5 loaves of bread? If I had been compensated with gold instead of fiat money, I could have likely still bought those same 6 items today.

We need a currency that doesn't allow BANKS to jack us of our wealth. I don't care about fiat money in the bank .. I want to put that gallon of milk and 5 loaves of bread in the bank .. so that they are their 20 years from now when I need them.

Today, we are suckers for playing with funny money. Banks just print that stuff up and loan it out and expect us to pay it back with labor .. our blood, sweat, and tears. Fiat money is a dang cheating game! If I earned a gallon of milk and 5 loaves of bread for an hour of labor, I want to be able to keep that .. to retain that buying power for later when I may need it. Today, someone is stealing all our wealth, and they can only do that so long as we are playing with fake fiat funny money.

We need a currency that can retain its earned value. I don't want to really get paid in fiat money .. I'd rather get a coupon that's good for exchanging for those 6 items .. good for them today .. good for them 20 or 30 or 100 years from now. If I earn a nickle today, and that nickle is worth a piece of bubble gum today, I want it to be worth the same tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and worth the same 100 years from now!

Fiat money is how they keep us poor and enslaved! It's a cheating scam invented by the evil wicked bankers. We also do not need banks.

Think outside the box people. If money is all you've known, it doesn't mean that's the only solution. Come on, lets beat these bankers at their own game. Lets kick their monompoly board over and start over again, and this time lets make sure we can't be enslaved, cheated, and robbed!!!

Originally posted by Carlthulhu
reply to post by Blaine91555

 

Yea, if you build something that's crap, and people take it from you, then you will get nothing out of it. But If you put your heart into your work, build high-quality stuff, then people will praise you.

What if I make the best oven in the world? What if I didn't even create the design, but I just help someone assemble the parts? How is the inventor going to pay me? What if he sells it for a ton of corn and my brother grows corn and I have corn coming out of my ears (pun intended)? Do I then have to trade the corn for something else to get what I want?

Isn't that all we really work for? Acceptance, Praise?

No, not me at least. I work to be able to trade the time that I spent for something I want without jumping through hoops.

Imagine a society where nobody has a job per-se, but rather alot of useful hobbies. I mean, you already have people who love to paint complicated, beautiful murals on city-walls. Some of them covering entire city-blocks. These people do it for free. Out of love for creation. Don't tell me you'd turn down an offer of someone to paint your house with such a motif for free. You'd probably even invite them for dinner, let them hang out, or fix their car for them. Our world is full of examples of people doing stuff just so.

And you want to point me towards the people that haul trash for "the love of it".

Take the free-party scene. A bunch of people get together and listen to awesome music, BYOB. Donations not mandatory. This, of course goes straight against the grain of local business, and so, the government. That's why they ban them, brand them with drug-abuse, and tax-evasion.

And you've never run into the guy that shows up time and time again without bringing anything worthwhile?

How can you evade taxes, when you don't make any money

But they would still be coming to take your grain, booze etc to pass to other people so what's the difference.

The only way to get around having a currency is the Electronic National ID. Even then we still have currency, we just call it credits instead of dolars or rubles or whatever. Money is just a counting mechanism.

Also the only way to achieve your proposed society would be to have a one world goverment. Otherwise people wouldn't never go along. International trade(barter) is here to stay. It would just work better if we were all using the same kind of credits which didn't constantly change in value.

I'm actually not against either the National ID or a one world goverment. I just wouldn't want the current people running the world to be in charge of or have influence on it in any way. Verdict is still out on Obama, though I have no issue with him so far. Kind of leery of some of his cabinet picks, although he may have chose some of them,just so he could force them, to do the right thing against their wishes. Makes me laugh if so.

no, man -you would not need a one world government. You'd just need verifyable, untraceable electronic cash, that's attached to your unique number. We wouldn't even need RealID, because that number would only have to be something you would personally know, and could be assigned arbitrarily. Cryptography would take care of the details. The only reason we don't have this system now (it was proposed in the '70s!) is that the govt, and banks would have no control over it.
This is just another power game.